


Elliptic Orbit [ARCHIVED]

by Rhiannon87



Series: Some Sort of Crazy [ARCHIVED] [3]
Category: Uncharted
Genre: Communication Failure, Dating, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Nate is not good at commitment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 12:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can't stay close, but they can't stay away from each other, either. Nate and Elena, after El Dorado and before Nepal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elliptic Orbit [ARCHIVED]

**Author's Note:**

> This is the original version of the fic. The revised/rewritten version can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6363007).

Elena's different.

That's the crux of the issue, ultimately. He might not have a girl in every port, but he’s not exactly lacking for company. He tends to be the love ‘em and leave ‘em type, except love is way too strong a word. But with Elena... it's different. He goes out of his way to stay in contact. He wants to talk to her when he's crawling around some dark, musty ruin, wants to ask her opinion or point out some interesting artifact that she's probably already noticed and identified.

She's smart like that. Smarter than he is, probably, with the kind of planning and common sense that he and Sully lack. She took to the treasure hunter (or grave robber, depending on the day) lifestyle almost immediately. Hell, she saved his damn life. Multiple times. Elena's different. She's special.

And he's not quite sure what to do about it. When he lets himself think about it, he'll admit that he wants something more with her. Something serious. Something besides phone calls and e-mails and random flights to L.A. for a weekend in her apartment.

He's sitting on a plane for such a weekend right now. It was random, as always-- three hours ago he was surrounded by stacks of books, researching a pirate ship that supposedly went down off the Ivory Coast and mentally calculating how much it would cost to rent a submarine. Then he decided he missed Elena and wanted to see her. So here he is.

He wants commitment, is what it comes down to, and the thought terrifies him. Nate's made a career out of avoiding commitment and responsibility, and a serious relationship requires both. Elena travels from time to time, more than the average person, but it's still not enough for him. And he breaks the law. A lot. Commitment would mean settling down, staying in one place, giving up his day job. And while he might bitch about it sometimes, he loves what he does.

Nate sighs heavily as the plane lifts off. This would've been a lot easier if she'd just been like the others, scared and needy or callous and detached. He could've walked away then. But no. She had to be different.

*

Elena has no idea what she wants.

Well. That's not entirely true. She sighs and stares up at the dark ceiling of her bedroom, which is quiet save for the rain drumming on the window and Nate's breathing beside her. What she wants is him. Like this. For... for a long time. Longer than the random weekends she's gotten so far. It's been ten months since the El Dorado expedition; she sees him at least once a month, talks to him at least twice a week. They're in some kind of long-distance relationship, whether Nate will admit it or not.

And that's part of what she wants, too. She wants to know where they stand. She's tried bringing it up before, but Nate always changes the subject. And to be fair, she always lets him. She knows what he's like, how much he needs his freedom, and she's afraid that if she pushes too much, he'll pull away completely. She doesn't want to lose him.

Elena glances over at Nate, his hair tousled from sex and sleep, light from the streetlight outside slanting across his face, and sighs. And why don't you want to lose him, Elena, she asks herself silently.

The answer's easy. Because she's in love with him.

And while the answer might be easy, what it means is anything but. She wants to tell him. She knows she can't. Not now. Not while he's still dodging her. Not while he's always running away.

She presses a kiss to his shoulder and curls herself against his back and tells herself that for tonight, it's enough.

*

“So, how's the girlfriend?” Sully asks when he comes back from his latest trip to L.A.

“She's not my girlfriend,” Nate replied automatically. The words feel wrong in his mouth, and he focuses his attention on the massive, dusty atlas in front of him.

Sully's quiet for almost a minute. “All right,” he finally says and goes back to cleaning his guns.

Nate glares at the book, because if he glares at Sully, he'll prove the smug bastard right. And Sully can gloat like a professional. No one needs that headache.

*

Elena's friends call Nate her boyfriend, no matter how often she claims otherwise. Eventually, she stops arguing the point and lets them win. She's pretty sure that's a mistake.

*

“So what am I supposed to call you?” Elena asks, pretending to be casual, while they're sprawled out on her bed one night. A little over a year since El Dorado, Nate thinks, and she's just now asking.

“Nate's fine,” he replies, even though he knows what she means.

She nudges him in the knee with her foot. “You know what I mean. What do we call this?” She waves a hand back and forth between the two of them.

Nate shrugs. What it should be called, what it probably _is_ , is entirely too frightening to actually say out loud. “Does it need a label?” he says instead.

Elena doesn't reply for a while. “I guess not.”

*

She spends way too long going in circles over it, and by the time she actually works up the courage to speak, she's pretty sure he's asleep. At least it'll save her the trouble of an awkward confrontation.

“I love you, Nate.”

She whispers it against his shoulder, and everything would have been fine, were it not for the slight hitch in his breath and the tiny shiver of tension that passes over him. She waits for him to move, to say something, but nothing happens. And it was probably coincidence, rather than an actual reaction, but that doesn't stop her stomach from twisting into knots.

He doesn't want anything more than this. She knows that. Even if she knew that he hadn't heard her... it's been a year and he won't commit. She's old enough to know the warning signs. She's sure as hell old enough to know better.

*

Elena stops answering his calls.

Well, not entirely. But what used to be one or two hour-long chats every other night turns into fifteen minutes once a week. Nate can't figure out what he did wrong, and he knows that if he asks he'll just be in more trouble. So he wracks his brain trying to work out where things went sideways. Or at least, what he can do to fix it. He puts up with a full three weeks of the cold shoulder treatment before he texts and asks if he can come out that weekend. She should know something's up, then; it's the first time he's asked before flying out there.

The reply comes almost twenty minutes later. _Sorry. On assignment._

He waits another five for the follow-up, for the invitation to come out another time. His phone stubbornly refuses to make any noise, and he slumps into his chair. She hadn't mentioned going on a trip when they'd talked last, and she _always_ told him when she was traveling, if only so he wouldn't fly out to L.A. and end up sleeping in the airport because she was in India.

Well. She always told him after that particular incident, anyway.

He lets Sully take him out drinking, and he almost goes home with a gorgeous dark-haired woman who looks nothing like Elena. And that's the problem, because he's thinking about how much she isn't Elena, and he apologizes and calls a cab to take him home.

Three days later, Sully's got a job for them-- nothing huge, just a ruined temple in northern Japan that might have some interesting artifacts hiding in the lower levels. Nate tells himself it's just what he needs and packs a bag.

*

The abrupt trip to Cambodia lasts almost a month; what was supposed to be a visit to a recently publicized excavation site turns into live reporting on riots in the capitol. She and her crew are the only Western reporters in the area, and their coverage gets picked up on all the major networks. When she finally gets back to the states, she's already booked meetings with two of them and is in talks with a third. It's the break she's been looking for ever since she started her show.

In any case, two and a half months pass without hearing from Nate. She tells herself he's on a job, or he's giving her the cold shoulder and she should take the hint and move on. She won't let herself think that he's dead. He can't be. She refuses to mourn him and tries her damnedest not to miss him. It doesn't work very well.

Normally he texts when he's in town, so it's more than a little surprising when he just shows up on her doorstep at ten in the evening. All that time without a word, and suddenly he's there, solid and alive and smiling nervously, hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket and a backpack slung over his shoulder.

Elena grabs him by the front of his jacket and hauls him inside before he can so much as say 'hello.' Nate seems bewildered for all of thirty seconds before he gets with the program and kisses her back, crushing her chest against his and tangling his hands in her hair. Elena can't keep her hands still, running them over his back and arms and chest, reassuring herself that he's actually real. Because she loves him and she missed him and she was so, so scared he was dead, and somehow it's seeing him again that forces all those buried feelings to the surface.

They leave a trail of clothes from the front door to the bed, and neither of them really says anything coherent until after, when they're both tangled in limbs and sheets. “So,” Nate says. “Miss me?”

Elena laughs and wraps an arm around his waist. “Yeah,” she says, even though she shouldn't. Even though she knows better.

*

The three-day weekend is good. Almost back to normal, even, for some given value of normal. They start talking more, and he makes it out to visit once more, a few weeks later. But nothing’s changed, not really, and they drift apart again. She takes an assignment in Beijing; he hears about newly discovered Mayan ruins and vanishes into the heart of Mexico. There are short e-mails and shorter phone calls, but they just lose touch.

This time, when Sully takes him out to a bar in Guadalajara, Nate doesn't blow off the woman trying to get him into bed. This is normal, for him, and the fact that he feels oddly guilty about it just means that he's off his game. He'll get back into it soon enough.

Sully goes back to the States with the money, and Nate wanders back and forth across Mexico, drinking and flirting and occasionally stealing artifacts to sell on the black market. It's enough to keep him busy and entertained for a couple months, and he eventually finds his way to a bar in Barbados. And somehow, Harry Flynn finds his way to the same bar.

Chloe's a familiar face and everything Elena's not, and in the interest of getting back to normal, Nate runs with it. She's sexy and tough and cynical and a perfect fit for his mood on this mission. He's knows she's fucking Flynn, too, but he's never really been the jealous type. Besides, she's running off with him in the end.

In retrospect, he probably should have been a little more suspicious about the whole arrangement.


End file.
